Asia's Travel Business: Mei Zhang's WildChina Takes A Walk on the Wild Side

She has been called China’s super travel agent, the gatekeeper to many of the Middle Kingdom’s most intriguing and enriching destinations. For 13 years Mei Zhang’s WildChina has been sending her largely foreign customers to remote, rarely visited sites of scenic and cultural beauty. In the process she has built her business into one of China’s most internationally acclaimed travel brands.

Now, she’s focusing on a new market–her fellow Chinese. “This was the plan all along,” she says. “When we started WildChina nobody in China was traveling. Everyone was working, busy making money. But now they have the time and ability to travel.”

Beijing-based WildChina has long won raves for meticulously planned tours of minority areas in Yunnan (where Zhang grew up), Gansu and Sichuan provinces. As it expanded it offered treks in Tibet and horse trips on the Qingzang Plateau, all guided by locals and highlighting community connections that appealed to adventurous foreign executives and expats. Going where few Westerners had gone before, the company pioneered horseback tours on China’s Tea Horse Trail, used for centuries to transport tea by pack horse from the mountains around Tibet to the border with Burma and Laos. Another excursion offers a culinary journey from the back alleys of Beijing and the Muslim quarter of Xi’an to the spicy kitchens of Sichuan Province. Each of these trips for 2014 quickly sold out.

But it’s a challenge to sign up Chinese for these exotic expeditions. Many liken this group of travelers to the Japanese of a few decades ago. The largely homebound Japanese began globe-trotting after their economy boomed, first touring timidly in large groups, then becoming more sophisticated and adventurous as they gained experience and familiarity with foreign languages, food and customs.

Thus far WildChina has organized trips for Chinese to Alaska and North Korea, but its other tours aimed at this market are tame in comparison. There are swings around Southeast Asia, with stays in luxury hotels, and a North American circuit. Yet these also have the WildChina stamp. The Asian tour showcases top-notch properties but less for flashy d?cor than proximity to cultural attractions–such as Amanjiwo, an upscale resort overlooking Indonesia’s Borobudur heritage site. In the U.S. WildChina guides visitors not only to New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco but also to Big Sur, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. “You have to hit the highlights,” concedes Zhang, “but we want to do more. The Chinese love nature; they just aren’t willing to work too hard for it. We get them to places of wonderful natural beauty.”

Chinese travelers weren’t even visible in most markets a decade ago, but now they pack practically all destinations. Last year more than 83 million Chinese went abroad, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. That’s up nearly 20% from 2011, and it’s an eightfold increase over 2000. The Germany-based China Outbound Tourism Research Institute expects Chinese travelers to top 100 million within the next year, and the institute’s director, Wolfgang Georg Arlt, projects 18% to 20% annual growth for many years into the future.

Everyone is chasing the surging dragon dollar. Derided in the past as cheap travelers, Chinese have become big spenders, particularly on luxury goods. Last year 1.5 million visited the U.S., spending nearly $8.8 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. The UN agency says Chinese spent a total of more than $100 billion on international travel in 2012, a 40% jump from 2011.

By far the bulk of Chinese visitors are group travelers, handled by mainland travel agencies offering short, exhaustive tours across Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. This is a cutthroat market that WildChina cannot, and has no desire to, compete in. Nor does Zhang expect to lure many of China’s very top spenders. “They are really demanding,” she explains. “And there is no loyalty among the elite.”

Instead, she expects WildChina to flourish among the widening Chinese upper middle class. Arlt says this well-heeled market is probably only 5% of the population, but that’s 68 million people. “And it’s growing rapidly,” he says. The market for Chinese touring abroad is already highly competitive, but Zhang believes she can carve out a niche offering meticulously researched and enriching tours to sophisticated Chinese travelers. “We focus on our areas of expertise,” she says.

In 2011 Zhang returned from the U.S., where she had moved a few years earlier with her American husband and three children. With 60 employees WildChina had been growing 25% annually, helped by her regular appearances at conferences on China travel. Her presence in the U.S. boosted the brand, since most customers were American, or European and Asian expats. But she moved back to Beijing, seeing the growth potential among new Chinese travelers. Last year WildChina launched its first tours for the Chinese market, and it targets local travelers with a new website, beshan.com. The name is inspired by a Li Bai poem from the Tang Dynasty about the beauty of nature; it means green mountain.

Thus far, she says, Chinese growth has been steady but unspectacular. “Our China business is probably just 10% at present,” she says, but notes: “I think it will take over. In five years I think 60% of our business will be Chinese outbound [traveling abroad].” Last year WildChina generated close to $15 million in revenue and handled some 7,300 travelers, a 59% rise from the year before. Yet she expects little or no growth this year. “Last year was extraordinarily good, so it’s hard to expect the same kind of growth,” she says, adding that publicity over Beijing’s air pollution early in the year hurt inbound travel and China’s austerity measures affected outbound travel. Annual gross profit margins continue to range between 20% and 25%.

Zhang notes that in these early days of pursuing the Chinese market, it’s still a learning process, both for her company and her new customers. Eventually, she expects, Chinese travelers will look to her company for the types of experiences that she built the business on– Wild Everywhere . Some Chinese are taking the hook. A cooking tour of Tuscany has sold out, along with a visit to Bhutan led by National Geographic photographer Greg Girard. In both cases there is strong Chinese appeal. Girard spent much of his career in China, while the Italian leader is Chinese-American Kyle Johnson, whose travel writing has a huge mainland following. “It’s a matching process,” says Zhang, adding that education is essential. “Take rafting down the Salmon River [in the U.S. state of Idaho]. Americans already appreciate that luxury is nature, even with no electricity. Most Chinese still want flashy. They don’t yet see the value in rugged wilderness, but they are learning. The outbound market is going to take off. It’s already taking off. It just needs to be shaped and directed.”

In many ways it’s a task she has prepared for most of her life. Zhang, 42, grew up in Dali, in Yunnan. After studying law and English at Yunnan University, she worked as a freelance interpreter. At a banquet the president of Thailand’s Krung Thai BankKrung Thai Bank was so impressed with her that he offered her a scholarship to continue her studies, which she used at Harvard University. After graduation she worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co. in Hong Kong, where one of her projects was for a U.S. nonprofit, the Nature Conservancy. It wanted to develop environmentally sound tourism models for Yunnan, and she designed a culturally sensitive travel company. The concept evolved into WildChina.

From the start the goal was not only profits but also grooming local staff and encouraging interaction between tourists and the communities off the main tourism trail. As Chinese go abroad in greater numbers, Zhang believes that many will appreciate this philosophy. “Our timing is good,” she says, adding: “I’m loving this. Serving the China market and being part of this giant sociological change is wonderful. I feel like I have this born instinct for this kind of travel. It’s about seeking the essence of a destination.” So now Chinese can go wild, too.

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